One Game at a Time

It's been 8 days ... 8 long days ... since I last attended a sporting event. I realize that in another month or so baseball, softball, women's LAX, and men's LAX will be in full swing and overlapping men's and women's basketball and I'll be dreaming of a couple of nights off. But for now it's safe to say that I've missed getting behind the eyepiece in the week or so that I haven't shot any sports. I've taken pictures around the house and posted them up to my Flickr account, but it's not as fun as athletics.

Tonight Maryland faced Virginia. It was expected that this game would be tight. Both teams are competing for the #1 spot in the ACC, and Virginia is a very physical team. This was obvious almost immediately as Virginia took on a player control foul in one of the early possessions.

Brenda Frese was as huge as ever and it's really quite surprising that she's still sitting courtside and participating in the coaching. It's a real testament to her commitment to the team. She looks like she could pop any day now, and she's still down there talking to Coach Park about plays and what-not. I have a lot of respect for somebody who is over 9 months pregnant and is still actively coaching an ACC game.

The game was very back-and-forth. There was no clear winner throughout the entire contest and both teams had strong leads at different points. Towards the middle of the second half Virginia had the momentum and looked like they were going to take one away from the Terps with an 8 point lead but Marissa Coleman put a stop to it. She had some key plays where she forced a turnover and made a driving layup that gave the Terps the spark they needed to get back into it.

Crystal Langhorne continued to excel and scored 17 points. Laura Harper scored her 186th block and tied Kris Kirchner for the all-time-block record at Maryland. She also banged home 25 points and 15 rebounds. She really is a remarkable player. Marissa Coleman was also in the double-double category tonight with 21 points and 12 rebounds. She managed to keep her cool against Britnee Miller, who was working her from the opening tipoff. At one point shortly before half time Coleman was blatantly fouled by Miller in a really physical manner in the backcourt and it looked like Coleman was going to knock her out. Cooler heads prevailed and Coleman ended up going to the line and scored.

Anthony Amobi from the DC Sports Box was there to work on the article. I didn't get very much time to talk with him this evening because I was busy in the media room helping Yuchen Nie get his email account set up. Yuchen is joining the DC Sports Box and I wanted to make sure he's in the loop on all of our communications. I got there late (as did he) and we were both very hungry so I didn't have much time for chatting before tipoff. It's a shame because there were several people there tonight I would have liked to talk with (Eddie, Reza, Greg, Yuchen, Anthony, and Natalia).

You can read Anthony's article on Maryland's Think-Pink win over the Virginia Cavaliers over on the DC Sports Box website here. It contains my photos as well.